I looked at the big cop and then at the young one. “You guys got brothers?”
Big one nodded. Young one said, “Two sisters.”
“Older or younger?” I asked the big cop.
“He's dead. Hit by a drunk driver when he was barely twenty. Killed his girlfriend at the same time. He was seven years older than me.”
“Did you fight when you were kids?”
The big cop crossed his arms over his chest. “He probably got sick of me hanging around. I hero-worshipped him. He taught me to play basketball, baseball, kept me out of trouble.”
“I was three years older than David and I used to get sick of him. I thought him being near me put me in her strike zone, you know? She'd be screaming at him, ragging on him about his grades or his clothes or how he looked, and he'd run into our room, where I was trying to keep out of the way. And she never ran out of steam, she just changed directions. She'd see me and start in. What was I doing sitting around reading when there was trash to be taken out and windows to wash? Then she'd start in about how she wasn't our slave. She didn't have to fetch and carry and cook and clean for a bunch of ingrates. God, she didn't cook for David as it was, and we'd been doing our own laundry since we were ten or so.”
I put my head in my hands. “I'd try to take David with me sometimes, like out to the park or to the movies, anywhere, just to get him out of her sight, and she'd call my cell. Screaming at me to get David's ass back home. He had to clean his room. I had to mow our lawn. Did I think I could keep everybody else's lawn perfect and our house looking overgrown and abandoned? Did she always have to be the joke of the neighborhood because of her sons?
“I thought I'd get some peace and quiet at school. But if she wasn't calling to bitch about David, David called crying because she wouldn't leave him alone. And I didn't realize how dark and moody I had gotten. I wouldn't do the frat-boy thing. Wouldn't go hang at the bars because of all the noise. My roommate was a Lit major and nicknamed me Lord Byron, started telling the other guys about my constant phone calls and overhearing someone crying. He asked if I was screwing my sister. I told him I only had a brother and then the gossip went around that I was screwing my brother. Nope, college wasn't the rescue I thought it would be.
“She never let up. It didn't matter that I was out of her sight lines.”
I looked back up. “It. Never. Ended.”
I pushed my palms against my ears. “I was going out of my mind.”